This is Lufthansa's second summer in Denver. The airline started nonstop flights a year ago in March. Asked at what percentage capacity the Denver flights are booked this summer, Tollar paused before answering. "It's very frightening," she said. "The numbers are about 110 percent right now. We're encouraging people to fly other gateways because we can't carry the demand right now.

I just found this article in the Denver Post which talks about how full Lufthansa's flights out/to Denver are for this coming summer.

Arsenal: Lufthansa has one big problem: they are short on intercont planes. No A340s available, the reactiveated birds have all headed to Munich as far as I know and even there the initial planned schedule had been somewhat cut to get more destinations on stream, even more A340s will be based there when they come online.

In FRA all B747s are based plus a good couple of A340-200/300s. The A340-600s will take another few months until they roll in and the first duty will be to get rid of the reactivated B747-200s which means that at least the first two A346 can´t be used for expanding service.

Intercon traffic has increased a good deal faster then expected and they are now getting short and shorter with capacity, only narrow-bodies are still parked to date. Maybe another German member can enlight us a bit further.

110% is quite high, even when there are a few seats still available in First and Business. Let´s see, maybe re-activating the last two B747-200s stored in Marana?

They last year they were planning on operating the 747 for this summer. However, after 9/11 those plans were canceled. They were probably expecting that flights to Denver would start to do quite poorly.

I think Lufthansa would rather save it's 747s for extremely high priority routes such as Chicago, New York, etc.

British Airways did fly 747s for most of the year to Denver before they were moved to LHR.

Sure miss seeing those birds.

"Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need." - Khalil Gibran

I was wondering LH could have sent it's A346's to DEN, but obviously they dont arrive in time. Imagine if LH had 767's in it's fleet, they could have complemented their 744's or A340's to DEN or elsewhere.

Condor (DE) could do it but I think this is a very unlikelyoption as DE needs their planes, too. LH could do some wet-leases but I doubt that, more likely that they will take up this or that second-hand opportunity or do it by shifting planes within STAR. Problem could be the 6% wet-lease barrier.

During the early 1990s, no European airline was present at DIA, but the Dutch charter airline, and Continental Airlines (CO) had dropped its Honolulu (HNL)–DEN–London (LGW) leaving Denver's travelers with the only solution of a first connection before reaching Europe. However, rather than to court many potential operators, the airport authorities were advised to focus on a few key operators which dominate intercontinental gateways that could generate traffic to/from Denver. This would be the start of a domino development, with other airlines then coming one after another as DIA's appeal would increase.

[...]

Besides London, DIA also looked at continental Europe and was expecting Frankfurt - Rhein/Main (FRA) to become its second destination thanks to the Star Alliance partnership between UA and Lufthansa (LH). DIA was hoping both carriers would carry on their strategy to link their respective hubs, possibly with multiple flights a day. LH was therefore heavily courted by DIA and was even proposed US$1 million in advertising incentives if it would launch a flight.

Eventually, LH announced in July 2000 it retained DEN and Phoenix (PHX) as it next US destinations. The service to DEN started on 25 March 2001 with A340-300s. As part of the deal, Lufthansa received US$1 million in marketing incentives, and had its landing fees waived for US$700,000.

UA's flight from DEN-FRA was dropped due to low yield. LH is struggling with this as well as most of these flights are booked full in economy class with cheapo tickets only. Many of the sales during the last few months account for that. Also, big companies such as Hewlett Packard, which have offices in Denver and Frankfurt, have reduced their travel budgets i.e. where they used to say, go ahead and book a full fare ticket in coach/business on UA/LH, now they must price shop. Ouch for us in the airline industry.

Word around DEN is that the FRA flight will come back next year with a *possibility* of LHR service (I think a 767-300).

Do you actually think most of the people booking DEN-FRA flights called LH?? Probably not. Id bet most was done through UA.

I to have heard NW is looking to start A330 service out of DEN, but thats just a wild rumor I heard from a girl whos dad works for NW. KL seems to be giving a lot more of its routes to NW this year than last. I wonder why.

If you check in June, you will see a few days where First and Business are fully booked too.

These days international routes are not filling up very well in the premium cabins as in the past. Businesses are fed up with paying high fares, so these days they are putting them in Economy. This is an issue for almost all transatlantic routes from the US. Not just Denver.

SailorOrion,

United relatively recently started DEN-IAD-MUC. I don't think we'll ever see it non-stop in the near future.

Zeus01,

Only about 10-20% of the plane is reserved for United bookings. That's not much at all.

Northwest does have a "target" list for cities to serve from AMS when the A330s start rolling in. It includes several cities such as PHX and DEN. So it is no rumour. It's on there "target" list, so that does mean they are considering it.

Regards

"Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need." - Khalil Gibran

I can't see Air France or Northwest/KLM being as successful as Lufthansa/United, which has the benefit of a huge United hub in Denver. It makes more sense for Air France to fly to Delta's hubs...maybe Salt Lake City. Without hub feed in Denver and a relatively small market in the Denver area, I can't see Northwest/KLM making it at all.

25 BA
: Bicoastal, I can't see Air France or Northwest/KLM being as successful as Lufthansa/United, which has the benefit of a huge United hub in Denver. It m

26 Bicoastal
: Hi BA, How many of the Lufthansa booked passengers transfer to another United flight in Denver? Though the United codeshare seats on the Lufthansa equ

27 BA
: Bicoastal, How many of the Lufthansa booked passengers transfer to another United flight in Denver? Though the United codeshare seats on the Lufthansa

28 BA
: Don't forget also that British Airways flies to Denver with no feed whatsoever. As a result, the flight is almost completely O&D. British Airways has

29 SailorOrion
: Please do not forget that FRA isn't a small airport, its one of the few critical hubs in world air traffic, and not only a transit point for people fr

30 BA
: Very well said, SailorOrion. Basically as long as there is enough feed at one end, the flights will do fine. Denver is a large enough market to suppor

31 MAH4546
: JC5280 is correct. UA experienced paltry yields on DEN-FRA, it has been stated many times. Wether or not the flight returns is yet to be seen, but yie

32 BA
: UA's seasonal DEN-FRA always got the overbooked passengers on the Lufthansa flight which is why the yields sucked. Next time UA and LH should both con

33 OA412
: It is all well and good to argue that SLC cannot handle international traffic because of its relatively small O&D offering (by the way, SLC is not 1/2

34 BA
: OA412, The 2000 United States Government Census showed that the Salt Lake City Metro has a population of 1.33 million people. The Denver metro had a p

35 OA412
: I know what the census says. The census, however, does not take into account a very large portion of the population just south of SLC. That brings SLC

36 MAH4546
: In addition, AF has been looking at FLL-CDG, which, to be entirely honest, has much more potential than DEN-CDG, IMO. However, it is all rumours. We'l

37 OA412
: I agree with you there MAH. The US has taken a back seat to AF expansion in Asia and Africa. Frankly, with the demise of SN, SR, and the reduced Afric